I recently bought a pack of dk-50; I wonder if anybody use it still. Some say it's identical to Tmax, but I never realy liked tmax; it is not crisp enough I believe, meanwhile Dk-50 is supposed to yield higher sharpness & grain. How do you rate this developer regarding the edge sharpness & tonality? And how do you compare it with other developers like Tmax & rodinal. I also heard that these old devlopers behave differently at different temperatures- I develop at 28-30ºC; what difference shall I expect?

Regards

-- xosni (xosni@gega.net), March 25, 2001

Answers

DK-50 is a fairly 'soft working' or low contrast developer. It was originally intended for developing copying film and the like. It's been a long time since I used it, and can't say how it compares to Tmax. My recollection is that results from it were nothing out of the ordinary - average grain, average sharpness, low base fog.
It's not an acutance developer by any means, if that's what you were looking for.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), March 26, 2001.

It's funny, I think of DK-50 as a really harsh-working developer. My folks have used it in deep tanks for 4x5 sheet films (mostly Ektapan, Tri-X, Plus-X) for as long as I can remember. The stuff can stand in the tank covered for ages, then come right back to life with a little fresh stock or DK-50R replenisher added. It's faster than developers like D-76: I seem to recall that development times for most films are only around 5 or 6 minutes at 68 degrees, with agitation at 1-minute intervals.

But it's not a fine-grain developer. Though great for sheet film, I suspect it would yield coarse results on smaller formats (which might be a nice effect, if that's what you're after!) I never actually tried it, though. But we souped some outdated 6x9 Tri-X in my dad's tank just last year, and got nice punchy negs...

-- Michael Goldfarb (mgoldfar@mobius-inc.com), March 27, 2001.